Tropical Storm Isaac brought heavy rains off the shores of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands Thursday night. The storm is headed for the Dominican Republic and Haiti, where analysts fear it could become a hurricane. The DR has begun evacuating towns in vulnerable areas, and thousands still living in Haiti’s tent cities are bracing for the onslaught. Isaac also threatens Florida, though it remains to be seen if it will pass through Tampa, where the Republican National Convention is supposed to begin  Monday.

Gawker has published hundreds of pages of internal documents from companies linked to Mitt Romney, saying that the companies represented accounted for more than $10 million of Romney’s assets in 2011. While the site has not yet reported the information divulged in the documents, it says that many of the more than 20 companies have ties to Bain Capital, and are investments “made pursuant to an agreement with Bain Capital regarding Romney’s retirement,” according to his financial disclosures. The holdings Romney had in the companies whose documents were published brought in $913,000 in income for him in 2011.

Government troops have begun an assault on the town of Daraya, on the southwestern edge of Damascus, killing 25 and wounding more than 200 in the past two days. Across the country at least 100 people—including 59 civilians—were killed Thursday, as rebels reportedly left the area. “They are using mortar bombs to clear each sector. Then they enter it, while moving towards the center,” said Abu Zeid, an activist who is in the area. In Aleppo, where violent warfare has been raging, the city is still partially controlled by rebels. Two hundred deaths were reported Wednesday, as violence continues to intensify.

Just three weeks before James Holmes killed 12 and wounded 58 in a shooting rampage at a screening of The Dark Knight Rises, he was banned from the University of Colorado campus. Prosecutors at Holmes’s hearing say the alleged shooter made threats that were reported to the police and resulted in his being barred from campus and the revocation of his campus key card. The university’s actions reportedly occurred around the time Holmes failed his departmental oral exams for neuroscience. Prosecution and defense lawyers continue to argue over whether the notebook Holmes mailed to his psychiatrist should be allowed as evidence. Holmes faces 24 counts of first-degree murder and 116 counts of attempted murder.

The USADA has officially revoked Lance Armstrong's seven Tour de France medals and banned him from cycling for life for doping. In June, the USADA charged Armstrong for his involvement in a long-term doping conspiracy. Armstrong’s lawyers say they will pursue a lawsuit if the agency tries to take his titles.  “I know who won those seven Tours,” Armstrong said in a statement. “My teammates know who won those seven Tours, and everyone I competed against knows who won those seven Tours.”

Well, that’s one way to shift the conversation. Mitt Romney told a crowd in New Mexico Thursday that the United States will be energy independent by 2020 if he is elected president.The candidate says his strategy would be to expand oil and gas over wind and solar, and to create 3 million jobs and more than $1 trillion in revenue by drilling for oil onshore, including an Alaskan wildlife reserve. He also criticized President’s Obama’s energy plan, saying "he’s taken federal dollars, your money, to advance these companies—solar companies, wind companies—$90 billion in so-called green jobs."

Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi doesn’t hold grudges. According to MENA, Egypt’s state news agency, Morsi issued his first decree Thursday, as he assumed legislative powers this month. The new law now bans the imprisonment of journalists who are awaiting trial for publishing-related trials. The move followed widespread indignation over a Cairo court’s decision to detain the editor of the newspaper el-Dustour on charges that it insulted Morsi and potentially harmed the public interest. The news editor will now be freed.

The man who killed music legend John Lennon won’t be released on parole. The New York Department of Corrections said Thursday that Mark David Chapman was denied an early release by a three-member board that voted unanimously to keep him incarcerated. Chapman shot Lennon four times on Dec. 8, 1980, outside the musician’s apartment building in New York City. He pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison. Chapman will be eligible to apply for parole again in two years.

There are some things it seems Mitt Romney is destined never to live down. Like that time he strapped his dog to the roof of his car and went on a family road trip. A group called Dogs Against Romney will hold a rally in Tampa on Sunday, the day before the GOP convention is scheduled to begin. The activists are hoping to draw attention to the way Romney treated his dog Seamus that fateful day…and to draw a parallel between the event and how he would govern. The group is also releasing a game called “Crate escape,” which challenges players to help Seamus flee his dog carrier.

Elton John isn’t one for subtlety, especially when it comes to his decades-long feud with Madonna. The singer recently told Australian TV that Madonna is "such a nightmare. Her career is over, I can tell you that. Her tour is a disaster and it couldn't happen to a bigger c---." But the singer didn’t stop there, adding, "And she looks like a f---ing fairground stripper." The Material Girl seemed to be take the high ground when she dedicated a song to Elton at a concert this week in France. “I know he’s a big fan of mine,” she joked. “And you know what? I forgive him. Gotta start somewhere.” Then she launched into none other than her song ‘Masterpiece,’ which beat out Elton’s ‘Hello Hello’ for Best Original Song at The Golden Globes this year. May the feud continue.

Olympic swimming star Ryan Lochte and exhibitionist royal Prince Harry may have appeared to be BFFs after the two paled around in Las Vegas last weekend, but Lochte is now saying he’s relieved that the two didn’t become too close. When asked by Matt Lauer during an appearance on the Today show Thursday morning whether Harry invited him to the now-infamous game of strip billiards, Lochte said he, thankfully, was not asked to join: “I’m kinda happy. I don’t need that.” Before their romp in the pool, Lochte said Prince Harry simply said to him “hey, you want to do somethin’” and the pair just jumped in and started racing.

An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found that zero percent of African-Americans support Mitt Romney. The same poll showed that President Obama had a four-point lead over Romney, surveying 1,000 registered voters Aug. 16-20. Obama also led Latinos under 35 and women, while Romney led Obama with whites. Another poll, by The New York Times and CBS News found that voters find Medicare to be a key issue—and a majority said they trusted Obama more on the issue. On Wednesday night, Obama held a fundraiser with basketball players in New York, using a basketball analogy to accuse his opponents of playing “dirty.”

Is this a way to keep those naked pictures away from the Queen? Buckingham Palace confirmed on Thursday that they have contacted with the Press Complaints Commission after the publication of naked photos of Prince Harry. The Palace said it believes the photos violate an invasion of privacy. While widely published in the U.S. (including in The Daily Beast) and taken in Las Vegas, no newspapers in Britain have published them—although The Sun recreated one of the images on the cover with a Sun staffer named Harry in the same position as the prince.

The death report for Rodney King was released Thursday, and TMZ has announced that it lists several substances that were in King’s system at the time of his death. According to the document, traces of alcohol, cocaine, marijuana, and PCP were found. The PCP is “interesting,” TMZ says, as a theory surfaced at the time of his 1991 beating that Rodney “displayed superhuman strength because he was on PCP at the time.” (Subsequent blood tests, however, failed to confirm that theory.) King was discovered dead at the bottom of his pool on June 17. The report still lists “accidental drowning” as the cause of death.

Tropical storm Isaac could become a potentially devastating hurricane before it reaches Haiti, where more than 421,000 people are still living in refugee camps following the major  earthquake that struck in 2010. Up to 12 inches of rain are forecast for some parts of the country and the National Hurricane Center warned that this "could cause life-threatening flash floods and mudslides.” Tropical storm Emily was expected to hit the country in 2011, but the storm weakened before it arrived.

The cover of No Easy Day: The Autobiography of a Navy SEAL may say it was penned by Mark Owen, but Fox News is revealing that the insider account of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden is actually 36-year-old former Navy SEAL Team 6 member Matt Bissonnette. The Alaska native could also be opening himself up to legal trouble but publishing the book, Fox News says, as the Pentagon did not vet it to ensure that unwanted classified information was not released. A Navy spokesman says any former service member who reveals national security secrets “could be subject to prosecution.”

It would be one of many changes. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke might want to start updating his résumé. After one of Romney’s advisers said in an interview this week that the GOP candidate would be willing to renominate Bernanke, Romney himself is reneging that offer. The candidate says he would want to select someone who “was sympathetic to the needs of our nation” in the event he is elected president. Romney says he hasn’t considered anyone in particular, but pointed to Glenn Hubbard and Greg Mankiw as excellent economic advisers.

Could Julian Assange be a bit paranoid? Despite his conviction that the United States is on a “witch-hunt” against him, sources within the U.S. government say they have no charges against him. Obama’s administration has said that the WikiLeaks mastermind’s fate is up to Britain, Sweden and Ecuador. Sources tell Reuters that the chances of Assange being pressed with criminal charges from the U.S. are low. Britain, on the other hand, is trying to fulfill an extradition notice to send Assange back to Sweden to be questioned in a sexual abuse case, despite Ecuador recently granting his asylum. Assange is making “wild assertions about us, when, in fact, his issue with the government of the United Kingdom has to do with whether he's going to go ... face justice in Sweden for something that has nothing to do with WikiLeaks,” said a U.S. State Department spokeswoman.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced  on Wednesday that he will attend a summit in Tehran next month with 120 other officials—dealing a blow to the U.S. and Israel’s plan to isolate Iran as that nation has threatened to increase its nuclear program. Also attending the Nonaligned Movement summit will be Egypt, a country that has long been estranged from Iran. The Nonaligned Movement is a group formed during the Cold War meant to unite nations that felt marginalized by the U.S., including North Korea and Sudan. Iran’s hosting of the conference this year is a coincidence—the summit’s host rotate from year to year—but Iran is using it as an opportunity to pursue an anti-American narrative.

The tiny West African nation of the Gambia announced on Wednesday that it will be executing all death-row convicts by September—despite not executing anyone in the past 30 years. There are an estimated 44 people on death row, including two women, and it’s unclear what prompted the policy change. The move has prompted an outcry from human-rights activists, with Amnesty International African director Audrey Gaughran calling it “deeply troubling.” The nation imposes capital punishment for a variety of reasons—reportedly even for smuggling heroin.

The Paul Ryan song catalog gets smaller by the day. Dee Snider, lead singer of the band Twisted Sister, issued a cease and desist order to the Romney campaign for playing the band’s 1984 hit, “We’re Not Gonna Take It,” at rallies. “There is almost nothing [Paul Ryan] stands for that I agree with, except the use of P90X,” Snider said. Snider’s order comes just days after Tom Morello, lead singer of Rage Against the Machine, Ryan’s favorite band, wrote an op-ed in Rolling Stone saying that Ryan is “the embodiment of the machine that our music has been raging against for two decades.”

Say goodbye to the middle class—or at least, that’s what a majority of Americans believe. The U.S. middle class is shrinking—and more Americans don’t believe they will achieve that way of life—according to a study released on Wednesday by the Pew Research Center. Only 51 percent of all adults are considered middle class, down from 61 percent in 1971, but the study did find that part of the shrinkage came from more people joining the upper classes, which now represent 20 percent of the nation, up from 14 percent in 1971. But those aren't all of the gains: the lower-income group rose to 29 percent of all adults, up from 25 percent in 1971.

After losing the support of his own party, this news has to come to some comfort to Todd Akin. The Missouri Senate candidate still has support of many conservative Christian groups, who have remained loyal allies during Akin’s tumultuous week. During Akin’s 11 years in the House of Representatives, he has supported a Christian agenda—and that has not gone unnoticed. Meanwhile, the controversy of Akin’s remarks continued: President Obama said Akin “missed a science class,” and politics as far away as Massachusetts were affected, as heated debates over the “war on women” began to take over the Senate race there.

How does the real-estate listing on this house look? Jeffrey Dahmer’s childhood home in Ohio is up for sale—and the current owner insists it’s a great place to live, once you “get past the horror factor.” The 2,170-square foot house in Akron, Ohio, is on the market for $329,000. Dahmer moved with his parents to the house in 1968, when he was 8, and it was the site of Dahmer’s first murder, in 1978. Dahmer moved to Wisconsin in 1982 and went on to kill 16 more people before his1991 arrest. He was killed in prison in 1994. The home’s current owner, musician Chris Butler, said he couldn’t understand why the house was so cheap when he bought it in 2005.

Mother Nature be damned, Mitt Romney is getting that presidential nomination in Tampa next week no matter what. "We do have contingency plans to deal with weather related and other circumstances that may occur to ensure that the business can go on at the RNC and Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan will become our nominees," an RNC spokesman confirmed Thursday. Despite the hurricane headed towards Florida, the RNC insists, "There is no such thing as canceling." But they may have some pushback: Tampa mayor Bob Buckhorn said Wednesday that "absolutely, we're prepared to call the whole thing off."

A Hollywood wannabe blew his chance at making the big time when he tried to bilk The Punisher, according to federal agents. 25-year-old aspiring actor Vivek Shah has been accused of sending threatening letters to famed producer Harvey Weinstein in attempt to intimidate the Tinseltown titan into handing over $4 million. Four other fat-walleted moguls, including billionaire Christopher Cline, were also allegedly the targets of Shah’s avaricious aims. “Each of these letters contained a threat to kill named members of the recipient’s family unless a large sum of money was wired to an offshore bank account,” said Postal Inspector Joshua Mehall in an affidavit. Shah was arrested in early August at his parent’s house.

Bill Clinton stars in a new ad for the Obama campaign this week, touting the president's economic policy. The ad is the first paid TV spot the former president has appeared in on behalf of Obama. He'd only lent himself to campaign videos and public appearances before. "This election to me is about which candidate is more likely to return us to full employment," Clinton says in the ad. "The Republican plan is to cut more taxes on upper-income people and get back to deregulation. That's what got us in trouble in the first place." 

After three months of intensive treatment that involved the amputation of her hands, leg, and foot, Aimee Copeland is home. The 24-year-old graduate student made national news in May when she became afflicted with a flesh-eating bacterial disease after a ziplining accident. After her release from rehab Wednesday, Copeland’s first stop was the Longhorn Steakhouse for lunch, before heading to her parents’ home in Snellville, Georgia, to relax and watch Comedy Central. A special wing in the home was custom built for her recovery and paid for by a local homebuilder.

This week has seen two more pieces of good housing news. The Census Bureau announced Thursday that new homes increased 3.6 percent in July compared to June. Based on July’s data, the total for his year will be 372,000 sales, up 3.6 percent from June’s annualized rate of 359,000. The year-over-year increase from July 2011 to July 2012 was a whopping 25.3 percent. The word on new-home sales came just one day after the National Association of Realtors reported that existing-home sales rose 2.3 percent in July compared to June—and are up 10.4 percent from the previous year.

The number of people applying for unemployment rose last week to a one-month high, bringing back worries about a recession, according to figures released by the Labor Department on Thursday. Jobless claims rose by 4,000 to reach 372,000 in the period ending Aug. 18, with the four-week average—the less volatile number—increasing to 368,000. Analysts said employers may be keeping their companies lean with fears of a recession looming—not to mention the ongoing European debt crisis and a slowdown in Asia. But there have been some bright spots on the horizon: employers added 163,000 jobs in July, the biggest gain since February, according to the Labor Dept. numbers released earlier this month.

Buzzfeed has discovered evidence of a young Obama's budding sense of humor. In 1990 the would-be future president penned a "Self-Tribute" in the Harvard Law Review's yearly parody about his first 100 days as head of the prestigious publication. Written under the pseudonym Baroque Yo' Mama, "Between Barack and a Hard Place," reads almost like a send-up of birthers. Obama claims to have been born in Oslo to a part-time ice fisherman, lists his age as merely "extraordinarily mature" and, ironically, claimed he was "not interested in politics."

Fighting continued in Syria on Thursday, with tanks and helicopters reported in Damascus as the United Nations monitors were expected to depart the country. Activists said that Syrian forces had fired mortar rounds on a Damascus suburb that overlooks the Qasioun mountain, with early reports of government troops going house to house to search for rebels. Hundreds have been displaced due to the fighting in Damascus as heavy fighting on Wednesday claimed an estimated 47 lives. The U.N., meanwhile, organized a Security Council meeting on Syria for August 30—the day that the last of the monitor are set to leave the country.